For those of you who may have missed any of the notable ups and downs (mostly downs) for our patriotically-impaired friends over at Diebold, Inc. over the last three weeks, I've just done a quick review of the most notable tales from the tape over at Huffington Post, including links to the latest key BRAD BLOG articles chronicling the end-of-year undoing of everyone's favorite American Voting Machine Company.

Brad:
Happy New Year......It's going to be a great year for all the wonderful and patriotic people in the Us. You have been a very large part of opening the eyes and hearts of the people .
Thank you very much.

I for one would think people should be proud of the label "conspiracy nuts"!!

I certainly am for one. For if it wasn't for being curious and obssessed with the fact there might be conspiracies afoot, if it wasn't for believing in the possibility of conspiracy-theories many of us would be sheep being led dangerously out to the end of our own demise as a culture ultimately!!

Not that every conspiracy-theory is real either, but without a open mind and a keen eye, you will never be able to discover what conspiracy lies behind the mask.....and if not to do it for your own sake, do it for the sake of your future....

A wise man once said "Freedom is the price of eternal vigilance" IE: always keeping oversight of that freedom, and making sure democracy does not just *dissapear* as it can and it will....to anyone who isn't keeping watch of the real dangers in the world.

*Salute to Bev Harris*

Doug E.

COMMENT #5 [Permalink]...
Can We Count?
said on 12/29/2005 @ 11:56 pm PT...

Question:

[Corporate Media: Feel FREE to borrow this to ask of the powers that be in D.C. who are responsible for this travesty of a program.]

WHO, in the popularity contest that passes for our federal legislature, decided that "VOLUNTARY" federal testing standards for brand-new and untested electronic vote-counting machinery operated by PROPIETARY corporate software, was a GOOD thing for our democracy???!!!

And that compliance with said "voluntary" standards should be "attested" to by private companies BEHOLDEN TO, because PAID BY, the corporate electronic machinery and software makers themselves? With details of any LACK of said compliance kept confidential 'twixt the voting machine corporations and the testing corporations, and unavailable to the proposed "end users": our unwitting local governments and their wads of the public treasury's cash. HELLO, D.C.?? What turnip truck did you all just fall off of anyway???

You couldn't make this stuff up, could you? And to think we all get the privilege of forking over our tax dollars to UNDERWRITE and finance these worst-practices, in the name of MIScounting our own VOTES. [HAVA: aka Hose America's Voters Act]

A SHAM, A SHAME, A NATIONAL SCANDAL. And the newspapers of America have to be BEGGED to cover it. Beyond disgraceful. Very, very close to unforgiveable, American Journalism. Either hire a few writers who can also do math, or write software code, or even use a little common sense, and then STAND ASIDE editors to let the truth through, or throw in the towel, and get in line for the Pravda-lite Alumni Club. You sold your own country down the river --- but why? Because you couldn't admit you didn't understand the complexities of the new-fangled voting and counting machines down at your local precinct, and "trusted" that the county politicians were smarter than you and had all that fancy software sorted out and bug-free all by their lonesome, behind closed doors?! Spare me.

Brad [& Bev]: HAPPY NEW YEAR. May YOUR Truths pave the way ahead next year, leaving American Journalism's Pravda-lite "Truth" behind in the dust.

For Can We Count: When this is said and done, the mainstream media will be covered with shame for their refusal to cover the election fraud story.

As you suggest, you can't make this stuff up. The 2000 election had been wildly controversial, rivaling
the 1876 Hayes/Tilden debacle in that the outcome wasn't known until almost Inauguration Day. Given this recent history, for TV and newspapers to have pretended that what happened in Ohio was nothing more than "conspiracy theories" run amok was incomprehensible...the equivalent of covering 9/11 without referencing the attack on the World Trade Center in the 1990s and comparing the two.

This isn't new, but here are the major components of the problem according to this conspiracy nut and in order of importance:

1) Corporate-controlled media (there are no independently owned TV networks/major papers because of Wall Street-driven consolidation in the 1980s-90s) believe that to expose massive election fraud would damage American prestige, weaken the dollar, and cause a stock-market implosion.

2) These same media are afraid of the Bush administration, which would retaliate against them for exposing election fraud by denying them access.

3) Most media executives are Republicans. If the Democrats had stolen 2000 and 2004, the protests would have made headlines, just as Ukraine's did.

4) There's a strong American bias against challenging election outcomes. Call it the "sore loser" syndrome. A losing candidate is honored for accepting a suspicious result and chided for not doing so. This might have originated in 1824, when Andrew Jackson's supporters raised hell over the corrupt bargain that gave John Quincy Adams the White House and weakened his presidency with their constant protests over four years.

5) There's a bi-partisan consensus in Congress that all electoral challenges are partisan in nature and thus invalid. "Both sides do it," therefore neither side has a moral platform from which to fight fraud. What is needed, obviously, is non-partisanship, not bi-partisanship.

John Kerry's immediate concession gave license to all of the above in 2004. That's why no Democrat candidate for president in 2008 who fails to make election fraud a campaign issue should be given the time of day (do you hear that, Hillary?).